It has been proposed to provide devices such as vacuum cleaners that can transmit information useful in the context of customer service troubleshooting calls. Such information includes the history of the appliance's motor, its model, when it was built, and temperature conditions it has been used in. Proposed implementations have utilized dial-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signaling over analog telephone lines in the voice frequency band between telephone handsets and a switching center. Such implementations proved undesirable because, among other things, they did not have suitable recognition confidence to meet their goals. Customer service experience was not improved.